God beyond our explanations, give us imaginative freedom, that we may rest before the splendor of your power for life that relativises both our accomplishments and our anxieties. In his name, Amen.
Psalm 25
Amos 7:1-9
Revelation 1:1-8
Matthew 22:23-33
The Sadducees are exemplars of "the arithmetic of this age." They think they can figure it all out, explain everything and so control and manage their life in the world. Jesus counters their domesticated reasoning by witnessing to the alternative reality, known in Scriptures, of the power of God that is not controlled or domesticated by our calculation. The defining reality is the God attested by our Genesis ancestors who is the god of the living. Thus God has the singular capacity and resolve to bring life out of death, to call into existence things that do not exist.
The soaring rhetoric of our reading in Revelation situates the power of God, fleshed in Jesus, outside the scope of our capacity. It does so by appeal to the old tradition of "coming with the clouds,' that is, outside our explanatory systems. The ultimate claim is that the Holy One, embodied in Jesus, is "the Alpha and the Omega," the beginning before our explanations, the completion after our management. The rhetoric shows how impotent and irrelevant is the closed reality of people like the Sadducees who think they can manage the mystery and gift of life.
It is a sobering admission of Advent to recognize that we are not the alpha. We are not the beginning point, not self-made, not self-sufficient; before us and behind us is the power for life that is pure gift to be received in trusting gratitude. It is an equally sobering admission of Advent to recognize that we are not the omega. We are not the point of it all. We are not the best imaginable outcome, the completion of creation. It is no wonder that the crowd was astonished by Jesus' testimony to the resurrection!
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